There's an interesting paper that touches on #2. From Assistant Professor Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi. Definitely worth a read.
Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
201–210 of 349 posts
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#202I'm thankful for existence itself. Sure, it's not always pleasant, but the mere fact that we perceive reality as we do is a fascinating rabbit hole, one that I wish I had discovered decades ago. The subjective experience of existence is one of the big unknowns left in this world, one that I don't think we'll ever truly understand. That's good though, because human curiosity is one of the wonderful, amazing things we…
I wish more people were aware that we are likely the only radio-using sapients in a 4'ish light year sphere around us [1] (4.4 ly for a 1MW broadcast, where the most powerful radio transmitter in the world is at 2MW). And that we're roughly in the center of the KBC Void [2], about a billion light years from the nearest "normal" baryonic density of the currently-known universe.
We might not be alone inside the KBC Void, but if we aren't, they and us are on a pretty isolated island of sapients in the currently-known universe.
Sapience is astronomically, vanishingly rare as far as we can tell so far. Some of us treasure it and are thankful for it accordingly. Perceiving reality at the level we do, with the understanding we only scratched an atom of the total surface so far, is both inspiring and humbling at the same time.
[1] https://www.quora.com/How-far-do-radio-signals-travel-into-s...
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> is more accurately something like: > In the course of several centuries over a vast territory comprising almost all inhabited mediterranean countries some 10-15 people excelled in their fields and many of them happened to live in the main city (and cultural capital) of the area. Your restatement excluded what I think is the most interesting part: >> and that it might be possible to intentionally recreate such condi…
What about saying that such conditions exists right now in contemporary world. We have great amount of thinkers and scientists and technologists and populists and cult leaders. All of them producing and moving world forward. It is crowded competition, actually.
Yep, the cynic in me thinks that actually creating the conditions where a dozen people's speculation on stuff dominates discourse for a couple of millenia like the Greek philosophers is less about the quality of speculation, and more about ensuring that not much else of note is written down...
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, nothingness has no cause or means for suffering.
Which comes back to #19: > That even if, as most scientific-minded people seem to assume, there is no afterlife, that’s not ideal, but is much better than other possibilities like, say, being tortured for eternity. Like, we could all be a bunch of Boltzmann brains[1] popping into existence in an empty universe, writhing with unimaginable pain in every pseudo-neuron of our temporary brains. But it's not like that, at…
There is no "we" that could be like that if it's boltzmann brains all the way down. It could very well be mostly unimaginable agony that exists, it's just that the temporary boltzmann configuration of "posting a thought on HN as a human with human memories" happens to not be a part of that.
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#205I’m thankful for yeast. It’s so, so convenient that we have a non-pathogenic bacteria which will eat pretty much any simple sugar, can be found on the surfaces of most fruits, and is essentially effortless to cultivate, which also does a bunch of useful things like leaven bread and make a bunch of delicious short chain fatty acids (both in bread and on their own, like in marmite) and make alcohol (although that one m…
Yeast is a type of fungus.
True lol thank you. Meant to say “microbe”
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#206I’m thankful for Hacker News and this post
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#207Im thankful to have a job and a roof over my head and a little bit of savings. Not having to really worry about money still blows my mind now and then. Looking across the street every day in California and seeing the homelessness crisis in full swing is an ever present reminder of what this economy and this society can do to you if you slip up for even a second and / or have even a minor run of bad luck. Working in s…
California sounds so extreme in this regard. When I started working in software in the UK I made much less than say a hairdresser, and never saw homeless people (not in a city so…). I didn’t feel this stark difference that being in 2020s + SF seems to highlight.
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder why #5 singles out aspartame though.
That's really weird. I'm not thankful for aspartame or other sweeteners, and even less thankful for corrupt food agencies approving them. Refined sugars aren't healthy, but aspartame isn't a solution. In my household, a kilogram of sugar lasts for months if not a year. Yes, we do buy food with added sugar, but always avoid artificial sweeteners, except when they are unavoidable in drugs or food supplements. I'm 192cm…
What science are you basing that on?
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#209Re #15 I watched a show about a boy who got infected with ecoli. The defence was plasma transfusion (I think) which was experimental at the time. He survived … barely. The bacteria tore through his body, made a hole in his stomach. The point is out sophisticated defence goes beyond the immune system into the knowledge, technology, science. Imagine what covid would be like without technology, governments, money, coordination. May have spread more slowly at the global level of course without technology but would be way more deadly.
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's really weird. I'm not thankful for aspartame or other sweeteners, and even less thankful for corrupt food agencies approving them. Refined sugars aren't healthy, but aspartame isn't a solution. In my household, a kilogram of sugar lasts for months if not a year. Yes, we do buy food with added sugar, but always avoid artificial sweeteners, except when they are unavoidable in drugs or food supplements. I'm 192cm…
What science are you basing that on?
> When your body processes aspartame, part of it is broken down into methanol.